Archived/Xen Roadmap/4.3
Proposed timeline
We are planning on a 9-month release cycle. Xen 4.2 was released on 17 September 2012. Based on that, below are our estimated dates:
- Feature Freeze: 25 March, 2013
- First RC: 6 May 2013
- Release: 17 June 2013
The RCs and release will of course depend on stability and bugs, and will therefore be fairly unpredictable. The feature freeze may be slipped for especially important features which are near completion.
Last updated: 17 January 2013
Feature list
Below is a list of features we're tracking for this release. If you have updates to a tracked feature you are working on, or are working on a feature and wish it to be tracked, please let me know.
NB: Several of the items on this list marked (external). These are not part of the Xen tree, but are directly related to our users' experience (e.g., work in Linux or qemu) or to integration with other important projects (e.g., libvirt indings). Since all of these are part of the Xen community work, and comes from the same pool of labor, it makes sense to track the progress here, even though they won't explicitly be released as part of 4.3.
Meanings of prognoses:
- Excellent: It would be very unlikely for this not to be finished in time.
- Good: Everything is on track, and is likely to make it.
- Fair: A pretty good chance of making it, but not as certain
- Poor: Likely not to make it unless intervention is made
- Not for 4.3: Self-explanatory
Completed
* Serial console improvements
-EHCI debug port
* Default to QEMU upstream (partial)
- pci pass-thru (external)
- enable dirtybit tracking during migration (external)
- xl cd-{insert,eject} (external)
* CPUID-based idle (don't rely on ACPI info f/ dom0)
* Persistent grants for blk (external)
- Linux
Bugs
* xl, compat mode, and older kernels
owner: ?
Many older 32-bit PV kernels that can run on a 64-bit hypervisor with
xend do not work when started with xl. The following work-around seems to
work:
xl create -p lightning.cfg
xenstore-write /local/domain/$(xl domid lightning)/device/vbd/51713/protocol x86_32-abi
xl unpause lightning
This node is normally written by the guest kernel, but for older kernels
seems not to be. xend must have a work-around; port this work-around to xl.
Not yet completed
* PVH mode (w/ Linux)
owner: mukesh@oracle
status (Linux): 3rd draft patches posted.
status (Xen): RFC submitted
prognosis: Good
* Event channel scalability
owner: wei@citrix
status: RFC submitted
prognosis: Good
Increase limit on event channels (currently 1024 for 32-bit guests,
4096 for 64-bit guests)
* ARM v7 server port
owner: ijc@citrix
prognosis: Excellent
status: Core hypervisor and Linux patches accepted. Tools patches submitted.
* ARM v8 server port (tech preview)
owner: ijc@citrix
status: ?
prognosis: Tech preview only
* NUMA scheduler affinity
critical
owner: dario@citrix
status: Patches posted
prognosis: Excellent
* NUMA Memory migration
owner: dario@citrix
status: in progress
prognosis: Fair
* blktap3
owner: thanos@citrix
status: RFCs posted
prognosis: Not for 4.3
* Default to QEMU upstream
> Add "intel-hda" to xmexample file, since it works with 64-bit Win7/8
- qemu-based stubdom (Linux or BSD libc)
owner: anthony@citrix
status: in progress
prognosis: ?
qemu-upstream needs a more fully-featured libc than exists in
mini-os. Either work on a minimalist linux-based stubdom with
glibc, or port one of the BSD libcs to minios.
* Persistent grants for blk (external)
owner: roger@citrix
status: qemu patches submitted
prognosis: Good
* Persistent grants for net
owner: annie.li@citrix
status: Initial implementation posted
prognosis: ?
* Multi-page blk rings (external)
- blkback in kernel roger@citrix
- qemu blkback
status: Starting soon
prognosis: Fair
* Multi-page net protocol (external)
owner: ijc@citrix or annie.li@oracle
status: Initial patches posted (by Wei Liu)
expand the network ring protocol to allow multiple pages for
increased throughput
* Scalability: 16TiB of RAM
owner: jan@suse
status: In progress
prognosis: Good
* vTPM updates
owner: Matthew Fioravante @ Johns Hopkins
prognosis: Good
status: some patches submitted, more in progress
- Allow all vTPM components to run in stub domains for increased security
- Update vtpm to 0.7.4
- Remove dom0-based vtpmd
* Guest EFI booting
- status: tianocore in-tree, some build problems.
prognosis: Poor.
Needs new owner.
* libvirt/libxl integration (external)
- Update libvirt to 4.2
status: Patch accepted
- Migration
owner: cyliu@suse (?)
status: first draft implemented, not yet submitted
prognosis: ?
- Itemize other things that need work
To begin with, we need someone to go and make some lists:
- Features available in libvirt/KVM not available in libvirt/libxl
See http://libvirt.org/hvsupport.html
- Features available in xl/Xen but not available in libvirt/Xen
* Allow XSM to override IS_PRIV checks in the hypervisor
owner: Daniel De Graaf
status: patches against 4.3-unstable posted, awaiting approval
prognosis: Good
This makes it possible to allow some user domains limited access to
dom0-only hypercalls. This could be used to allow a user-created
toolstack domain to administer its own set of VMs instead of relying
on dom0's toolstack.
* V4V: Inter-domain communication
owner (Xen): jean.guyader@citrix.com
status (Xen): patches submitted
prognosis: ?
owner (Linux driver): stefano.panella@citrix
status (Linux driver): in progress
* Wait queues for mm
owner: ?
status: Draft posted Feb 2012; more work to do.
prognosis: Poor
* xl PVUSB pass-through for both PV and HVM guests
owner: George
status: ?
prognosis: Fair
xm/xend supports PVUSB pass-through to guests with PVUSB drivers (both PV and HVM guests).
- port the xm/xend functionality to xl.
- this PVUSB feature does not require support or emulation from Qemu.
- upstream the Linux frontend/backend drivers. Current work-in-progress versions are in Konrad's git tree.
- James Harper's GPLPV drivers for Windows include PVUSB frontend drivers.
* xl USB pass-through for HVM guests using Qemu USB emulation
owner: George
status: Config file pass-through submitted.
prognosis: Good
xm/xend with qemu-traditional supports USB passthrough to HVM guests using the Qemu emulated USB controller.
The HVM guest does not need any special drivers for this feature.
So basicly the qemu cmdline needs to have:
-usb -usbdevice host:xxxx:yyyy
- port the xm/xend functionality to xl.
- make sure USB passthrough with xl works with both qemu-traditional and qemu-upstream.
* xl QXL Spice support
owner: Zhou Peng
prognosis: Fair
status: Patches against 4.3-unstable posted, awaiting approval
* Remove hardcoded mobprobe's in xencommons
owner: ?
status: ?
prognosis: Poor.
* openvswitch toostack integration
owner: roger@citrix
prognosis: ?
status: Sample script posted by Bastian ("[RFC] openvswitch support script")
* Rationalized backend scripts (incl. driver domains)
owner: roger@citrix
status: libxl hotplug sumbmitted. Protocol still needs to be finalized.
prognosis: Fair
* Xen EFI features
- dom0 able to make use of EFI run-time services
- Xen able to use EFI boot-time services (?)
- Xen able to detect the existence of a signed Linux binary, and leave EFI boot-time services enabled for dom0 to use when appropriate
- dom0 able to use boot-time EFI services and disable them when done
status: No owner.
prognosis: Probably not for 4.4
* Serial console improvements
owner: ?
status: Stalled (see below)
prognosis: Probably not for 4.4.
-xHCI debug port (Needs hardware)
-Firewire (needs hardware)
* Make storage migration possible
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Probably delay until 4.4
There needs to be a way, either via command-line or via some hooks,
that someone can build a "storage migration" feature on top of libxl
or xl.
* Full-VM snapshotting
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Probably delay until 4.4
Have a way of coordinating the taking and restoring of VM memory and
disk snapshots. This would involve some investigation into the best
way to accomplish this.
* VM Cloning
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Probably need 4.4
Again, a way of coordinating the memory and disk aspects. Research
into the best way to do this would probably go along with the
snapshotting feature.
* xl vm-{export,import}
owner: ?
status: none
prognosis: Prob put off until 4.4 (or GSoC project)
Allow xl to import and export VMs to other formats; particularly
ovf, perhaps the XenServer format, or more.
* Memory: Replace PoD with paging mechanism
owner: george@citrix
status: none
prognosis: Prob put off until 4.4
* PV audio (audio for stubdom qemu)
owner: stefano.panella@citrix
status: ?
prognosis: ?
* IllumOS support
owner: Igor Kozhukov
status: Stopped
